


Kick in the Head

by TheJinxedJailer



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Eventual Relationships, F/M, Slow Build, Soft Apocalypse, its not 'dark' just silly, this is not to be written as 'serious'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-26 17:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9912968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJinxedJailer/pseuds/TheJinxedJailer
Summary: Many things can happen after the events of Portal 2. I urge you to turn away if you do not like sarcasm, mistrust, and music by the likes of Frank Sinatra, as this telling of the events afterward is chock full of all 3 of those things. It's doubtful that GLaDOS has the capacity to trust anyone who has destroyed her life-work, or of Chell to trust anyone at all, much less a man who was painting her face on walls for years, but we shall see.





	1. Dismal Deletions

Wheatley hadn't known that he'd had a sleep mode until he was stuck up here. In the facility, he'd always been awake and doing something. Most of the time, the 'something' was being done incorrectly, but the point still stood that he'd never felt unoccupied in his surroundings, even strapped to the management rail. But now that he knew he had it, it was the only good thing about being here.

   He missed Aperture. Well, perhaps that wasn't completely true. He missed aspects of Aperture. He missed knowing where everything was, he missed having walls around him instead of this soundless black abyss, he missed talking at other cores that had some semblance of cognitive ability. He even missed having a purpose for those brief few hours when he tried to help that walking human fire-hazard to escape. The fractured little core tried not to think about her anymore; he'd thought about her enough as it was, and he'd thought the same things as least two times each, which was more than plenty, and now he was sick of thinking.

 

   If there was one thing that Wheatley could safely say he was ‘good’ at (Other than messing things to hell and back) it was blocking out things that he didn’t like. He never had the heart to delete anything that displeased him, not on purpose. What if he needed it later? Because as far as Wheatley was concerned, even when staring electronic death straight in the eye and the overwhelming evidence that dictated otherwise, that someday there would indeed be a ‘later’. That was one of the many reasons that he did not keep track of the time. Keeping track of how much time had passed would make him go insane and drive points that he did not want to hear straight into his little core processor.

 

   In the orbit of the Earth, he thought, was not the worst place to be but certainly the most boring, especially when one had no limbs. He wasn’t exactly sure what he would be able to do with limbs, should he have them, but he figured it would be a bit more interesting that twirling slowly in a circle for day upon day. He’d be able to block his damaged optic from the garish rays of the sun if he had arms or hands.

 

   Wheatley, in space, was beginning to hate a lot of things. His optic was already damaged and he couldn’t see as well as he once could, so the sun blinding him, even momentarily, was salt to the metaphorical wound. Needless to say, he hated the sun now as well. Besides the sun, he hated the quiet. At least there were ambient noises back in Aperture, like the odd bird that had somehow found its way underground or the creaking that the walls made after the potato plants got a little out of hand. But even mildly spooky noises were better than no noise at all; the core couldn’t even hear his own processors or cooling fans whirring out here.

 

   There were only so many things that Wheatley was able to do in the day, but since he’d found sleep mode, it was more like quick breaks between long sessions of hibernation. He didn’t like counting things, which got tiresome after a while of counting stars and then losing count after the three-thousand mark, and he didn’t have anybody to talk to. Not anybody he  _ wanted _ to talk to anyway; he’d muted the Space-core’s transmission signal a long time ago. They were in space after all, so if he was talking, the sound wouldn’t carry. The only reason he ‘heard’ the mad little core’s ramblings was that he’d kept his local communication channel open.

 

   The other thing that he could do was browse through his files; he was surprised at how many programs he had that he never ran, or would never be able to run, now that he was up here. Things like the flashlight application still worked, but served no purpose. Once he turned it on and, for whatever reason, was quite startled when the light didn’t reach any surface and just kept careening through space. He now kept the flashlight application in a folder called ‘Delete Later Maybe I Dunno’ along with a myriad of other things that were mostly memories but also sometimes impulsive thoughts and the odd program that he was too afraid to open. For instance, things like ‘Venn Diagram Generator’ was one of the more boring sounding names, but then there were EXE files called things like ‘Tooth-Fairy.exe’, and he did not like the sound of that at all.

 

   But that was beside the point. Wheatley amazed himself, if only a little, at the amount of junk files he had tucked away in the most odd corners of his hard-drive. There were files that served a purpose but were not used, files that once did something but had become corrupted, and files that were empty but still sat there taking up space even when they had nothing in them.

 

   Wheatley had just managed to sweep a couple of these empty junk files out of his communication center; he could actually delete those without a second thought.  _ Cleaning house in my own head. Body? I’m kind of just a head, aren’t I? _ He thought idly as he turned to the right, the blue, green, and white sphere of the earth at the edge of his blurry vision.

 

   Now that most of the empty trash files were gone, he saw a few things that he was sure he had seen before, but neglected to think they were important, and therefore did not keep them in his ‘easy-access’ memory. One of the things was a communication channel manager. The other was a file called ‘How To Use the CC Manager’.

 

   So he opened the program file. Had it been displayed on a screen rather than inside his mechanical mind, it could be seen that there were two tabs: local communication and radio communication. Wheatley shot a sidelong glance in the direction that the Space-core had been last, and found that he’d spun around a couple of times but was apparently still kicking and excited to be above earth’s atmosphere. He did not open the channel to find out.

 

   Something that did catch his interest was under the radio communication tab; it was a handful of dead channels that had error codes spliced into their titles and two open channels. One of them, entitled “Pirate Station Sinatra”, sounded interesting enough on its own merit; it didn’t occur to the core that anything that was publically labeled ‘pirate’, ‘black-market’, or ‘100% organic’ was probably not illegal or 100% pure anything. The other channel provided a more immediate interest to him, however.  _ Michigan Relay Tower 48? _ If he had said it out loud, it would have sounded skeptical. And cautiously optimistic, but Wheatley was very guarded in his optimism. The channels weren’t flickering, even when he refreshed the application just to make sure. His shutters opened in disbelief, his upper handle raising. This had been here the whole time, the whole god-forsaken time, and he was just stupid enough to have overlooked it on multiple occasions.

 

   Not one to voluntarily or consciously dwell on the past, he began to nervously debate on opening the relay station. Instead of doing that, he stalled himself by opening Pirate Station Sinatra, hoping for maybe some interesting morse code or maybe a talk show that was midway through. He couldn’t remember up front whether or not he had liked stand-up comedians but he felt that hearing another voice that wasn’t just a recording would do him a little bit of good, and he wouldn’t have objected to stand up even if it was chock full of unfunny jokes and bits that droned on for more than ten minutes, which it often was.

 

   Pirate Station Sinatra proved to be a radio broadcast of what else: songs sung by or including Frank Sinatra. Upon further inspection, even that was a lie, as not every song had Frank Sinatra in it. It was probably more of an era generalization than anything. He was little disappointed but nonetheless glad for a change of pace. He was able to triangulate the signal’s source and found that it was based somewhere in the upper-middle of the US. However nice the song was as compared to the deafening silence of the vacuum of space, the other station was still on the edge of his mind, as well it should have been.

 

   Wheatley jerked his optic toward the Earth, almost as if he thought that it wasn’t there, even if it was sending signals that were powerful enough to reach space. He didn’t want to entertain any questions; little naggy inquiries and statements like ‘what could happen?’ and ‘this could end very badly, but I’m not sure how’ threatened to surface, but he pushed them down, focusing on Michigan Relay Tower 48.

 

   Taking a metaphorical deep breath, the personality core opened the relay channel, and waited for the standard connection beeps. He counted them down,  _ One… two… three. _

 

_ You have been connected to- _

 

   Unfortunately enough for Wheatley, he did not pause to listen to wherever the relay was being hosted from. Instead, he immediately began yammering at light-speed into the channel.

 

   “ _ Hello? Hello, is anyone there? I need help! I’m in space, I’m caught in space, I promise I’m not an alien. But-but I am in space! I got sucked out here by some mental patient with a portal device, I’ve been here for… for God knows how long, but please! Something, a-anything!” _

 

   There was a silence that was filled with soft static, as if someone was holding the transmission button but not speaking into the microphone. When someone did speak, however, he wished that the static would have continued so that he could put down the relay system forever.

 

_    “Oh my god, it’s  _ **_you_ ** _.”  _ The amount of concentrated hatred and contempt that rippled through the channel almost melted the paint from his hull. It was almost like he had two garish yellow lights burning him now: one that was very deadly but ultimately harmless, and another that was very deadly and  _ knew _ she was deadly, but at the same time couldn’t catch him in her vicious claws.

 

 Wheatley sat in space, afraid to reply, afraid to close the channel, afraid to even move. The blue light in his optic had retracted tremendously so that it was barely there. “ _Of course it would be Her. Why wouldn’t it be Her?_ _Of course I couldn’t stay resigned to my bloody fate, oh no, but why did it have to be_ ** _Her?_** _”_ He thought, but unfortunately, this was a thought that was broadcasted aloud.

 

_ “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.”  _ She sounded almost exasperated. _ “You’d think you would have gotten a bit less impulsive after such a long meditative experience in space, wouldn’t you, metal ball?” _

   Wheatley was visibly shaking now, a couple of his plates clattering against each other.  _ “I… I…” _

 

_ “Oh calm down, you moron, the worst I could do is shut off the channel.” _ GLaDOS spat, the static behind her rising with her voice. She paused, but the channel never closed.  _ “Actually…” _

 

   “ _ Oh, nonononononono,”  _ Wheatley snapped around a bit and stared at the general direction of Michigan, as though seeing her would somehow stop whatever she was planning. He tried to close the communication channel, only to be met with an error message: the other party is now hosting.

 

   When GLaDOS came back into the call, she sounded almost blissful.  _ "I'm not one to hold a grudge- unlike some morons who happen to be floating in space. After all, I'm a bigger person than that. And I'm willing to overlook all of the dumb, idiotic, awful things that you've done to my facility. That is, if you are." _

 

   Stunned, suspicious, and wishing he could drop dead, Wheatley said nothing. 

 

_ “I’ll take your stunned and gracious silence as a ‘yes’. Since you’re so good at finding signals after only… oh, about three years of being able to do nothing but sift through your miniscule little brain, I have a bit of trivia for you.” _

 

_ “I-I’ll bargain, I’ll never bother you again. I’ll delete the communication channel, delete the execution file. Hell, I’ll even d-delete my memories of you, if you’d like! I would never be able to bother you again!” _ Wheatley whimpered, attempting to parley in vain. He might as well, it wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go in the conversation.

 

   GLaDOS paid this no mind, her voice cooler than deep space and as smooth as a water-worn rock.  _ “Did you know you don’t actually have to be in the room where the robots scream at you to hear the robots scream at you?” _

 

    Her channel closed, another was patched in, and Wheatley was never happier than when he collapsed into sleep mode about two days later.

  
  


   It was merciful of her to cut off the channel as quickly as she did. As far as GLaDOS was concerned, she could have and  _ should _ have left the channel open and placed her reception of it on mute. But, along with being distracted by quite a few  things, she eventually got tired of keeping the signal going when there were more immediate matters that needed to be taken care of. Besides, ‘spite’ had its place in ‘respite’ after all; she’d get bored if she ran in constantly.

 

   48 hours had passed since she’d patched in Room 939 to the communication relay, which was a much shorter amount of time than the days that had thus far passed without incident. Of course the moment she looked away things would begin to go haywire. Sometimes she wished the facility wasn’t as big as it was since half of it was still in shambles and being rebuilt; she was enough of an adult to admit that once she’d built the same wall three times before realizing it. But that was neither here nor there, because now she had yet  _ another _ thing to monitor. It’s not as though it posed any problem to her, but what kind of person would she be if she didn’t at least complain a  _ little _ bit, even if it was completely fake and barely took half a second to get over?

 

   She didn’t need to oversee it physically, after all; being plugged into the mainframe was like sitting in a chair and inputting code commands into a computer. Only instead of doing one code at a time, 15 were processed every second, some of them redacted, spat out again, then nerfed altogether. She constantly shifted test chambers, collapsed them, completed them and recycled their innards, scraping the metal and tossing out whatever unlucky subjects had managed to spend their final minutes there. Turning at least 20 cameras at a time in at least 20 different directions, making new materials for test chambers, attempting to fill the large gaps beneath Aperture with some form of thick metal rebar… it was all very exhausting. Or, it would be exhausting, provided she had the brain of a field mouse.

 

   Overseeing construction of a facility was the last thing that she wanted near her; never letting anything that she made or did be anywhere near her chamber was standard protocol. Tremors did not pay any attention to her protocol, unfortunately, and when one gave the facility a shake awfully close by, she dropped her little shenanigan and again became suddenly rather annoyed. She didn’t even really have to switch through her cameras, the new ones she had installed outside of the testing tracks and over the catwalks, to know that it was still probably one of the malfunctioning reactor cores. Even over the course of a couple of years the damn things still required a few kicks and some polish in order to work properly. 

 

   Usually she had calculated when it was going to start pitching fits and knew how to at least lessen the impact beforehand through several relay stations that she’d placed nearby. Admittedly, she had been distracted, at least a little bit. And rerouting 939 had, in fact, scrambled a few of her channels. That was her doing and it was for a good cause, so it was no matter now.

 

   At first when the signal had been relayed, she thought it might have been one of those human nitwits from further up continent that were always taking her towers. She would have been able to pinpoint its source directly if the channel hadn’t opened first and grated her nonexistent ears the moment it had opened. 

 

   For a few seconds she’d been shocked and infuriated at the disrespect, at the sheer unmitigated gall that this little idiot had to go and knowingly contact the facility he had scarred and warped and demolished. He’d even left junk files strewn throughout her chassis; ridiculous schematics that were mostly made up of mashing two or more of her already functioning robots together, the most basic of test chambers consisting of only cube and button based testing. She almost wanted to print them out and dump every physical copy into her plethora of incinerators. But she had work to be done, so deleting all of them would do.

 

   She quickly surmised that, while the little idiot did once certainly have the confidence to pull a stunt at least somewhat similar to this, that the panicked screaming indicated that he didn’t know he’d been connected into an Aperture relay tower. It didn’t surprise her, now that she thought about it. On a day such as this, he’d been lucky that there were any radio stations open at all; a storm had passed overhead recently and had knocked quite a few towers. That was the one thing those surface dwelling gremlins were good at: fixing the snapped wires that she couldn’t reach. Michigan Relay Tower 48 was wired directly to Aperture through a sturdy cable that was very well protected anyway, but the other towers that Tower 48 was connected to were standing on their own against the sky, unsheltered. It was fortunate for her that humans needed so much blind white noise.

 

   There was one station that was tolerable for the most part, but had a ridiculous name: Pirate Station Sinatra. None of the songs were pirated because nobody who owned the copyright was alive. The music was decent to tolerable, but she didn’t often listen to it. Humans sung about emotions rather than anything practical. She found that she liked the one about uranium alright, but it was still pretty useless seeing as how money was defunct.

 

  The only ones truly interested in the radio were Blue and Orange. She hadn’t meant to let them get ahold of a radio, and supposed that one had been found in one of those scribbled-in wall cubbies. GLaDOS found those everywhere; it seemed that no matter how much of the facility had been reduced to wreckage and how many newer rooms she had rebuilt, new ones would show up. There were no signs of life shown in any of her scans and she didn’t bother to retain any notion of an afterlife for humans. Caroline certainly wasn’t granted one.

 

   But Blue and Orange had indeed found a radio, and had since managed to dial it to several radio stations. Most of them were static and connected to Aperture, but when they got high enough up in the facility, they could access Pirate Station Sinatra. Orange really seemed to like it the most of the two while Blue merely entertained her simulated happiness.

 

   GLaDOS scratched her metaphorical chin as her thoughts drifted partway to her little test gremlins. Perhaps they could monitor the radio channels while she repaired the reactor core. Again. She was more than capable of doing it herself but those tremors were getting too close to her chamber.

 

    She connected to the intercom, not bothering to locate them. “Blue, Orange, return to the nearest disassembler. You’re being called up. I have someone I’d like you to watch for me.”


	2. Heinous Hindsight

   Never let it be said that Chell was not a practical person. She believed this with all her heart, despite the many bug bites, cuts, scrapes, chilly nights, and other things that could easily be avoided. And she  _ was  _ indeed practical, but spiteful was another thing she was. She was both spiteful _ and _ practical with her money and goods on all accounts.

 

   She was not to be haggled into high pricing, oh no. So when she had cornered a passing merchant who was looking too tall to be a real human, scraggly, and like he’d rather be elsewhere than eying her down, she made the quickest transaction of her life while managing to actually get a few things that she needed. A fresh pair of pants and a shirt, a hoodie, some ancient canned food, a carving knife, and a half-empty box of matches seemed like a fair trade for a few loaves of fresh (Well, relatively fresh) bread and some woven baskets.

 

   Chell hated her wheat field. She knew exactly why she hated it, and she acknowledged that she hated it, but that did not help her come to terms with it. It wasn’t even a full field, certainly not as wide and endless as the parent field that her seeds had come from. But because of the name she hated it. However, hating it was no reason not to use it. She tended to it but mercifully did not have to actually make anything with it herself most of the time.

 

   As she trudged back to her little stead with the knife in her hand and everything else in a water-tight woven basket, Chell wondered if she should start keeping count of how many people she’d seen. She didn’t know the exact amount of time that she’d been away from that abandoned phone-store from hell, but she surmised that she probably should have seen a few more humans than she had.

 

   There was the family of two that lived upriver in a shed, and then a camp that nobody lived in that was mostly used for trade, but that was a day’s walk and she’d been there only twice. Then there was the tall fellow she’d traded with today, who she’d seen make this trek a few times.  _ I hate his voice. _ Chell dismissively thought, her eyes trained on the cluster of pine that began the forest where she lived.

 

   Chell hated an awful lot of things. Maybe that’s why people didn’t like her around for long periods of time. This was fine; after all, the last time she’d had company there was a heinous amount of absolutely atrocious things that happened to her before she left.

 

   It is perfectly understandable that Chell would hate things that reminded her of her time in Aperture. Some people are afraid of things that have wronged them, which is rational as well. But then there are those who are not afraid to confront their fears head on with a knife in one hand and a grenade in the other, however irrational that may sound. Chell was one of those people, though as of that time, she lacked a grenade.

 

   The grass crunched beneath her feet as she hurried along, trying to get home before it was dark outside; this was big cat country. She’d never seen one herself, but she heard them at night, howling into the sky from mountaintops near and far. Three years in this place had kept her on her toes. Well, not three years; instead, two and a half years. The six month shifting and settling period had been harder than actually finding someplace to live and keeping that place up to snuff. If there was any way to measure the amount of distance she’d travelled from that little shack and the seemingly endless wheat field that surrounded it, she would have found that it was a rocky and hilly five mile walk. Chell had not gone in only one direction; on the contrary, she had looped back through the wheat field accidentally many times, much to her chagrin. But she didn’t care about distance, she just cared that she was away.

 

   Her legs had gotten rather strong, as well as the rest of her. She hadn’t been weak by any means but  now she could throw a grown man quite a few feet if she had to. Initially she didn’t know this, but there was an upstart a year or so ago at that large market that had attempted to mug her. He managed to catch her beneath the eye with a knife but that was more of a slap the ego than anything; she’d let her guard down in the group setting that she knew was usually safe.

 

   One of the many miscellaneous species of birds that inhabited the area whistled and flew past her into the heavy grove of pine; Chell liked them when they stayed out of her field and her slowly growing vegetables, though she never knew what kind they were. It seemed pointless to Chell to name everything. It made some sense to name things that were dangerous so you could identify them, like mountain lions or whatever the old people at the market had called ‘tax-collectors’, but to have a name for every solitary thing was ridiculous. It put too much stress on her memory.

 

   There was one non-dangerous bird that she loved and was glad she knew the name of, which was a raven. Aside from it being the cursed bird that had nested inside Aperture, the species itself wasn’t shabby looking either, and she had one in particular that was her favorite. It was a pretty little thing she’d found with its head stuck in a barbed wire fence when she had settled into her home. At first, she thought it was dead, only to find that it was chugging along, albeit weakly and with its head caught in a rather untoward spot. Chell didn’t own the raven, but she considered it her pet, or if not her pet a companion. It was a far superior companion, one that didn't talk constantly and sometimes brought her shiny things. She had a drawer full of shiny things the raven had brought her. This raven had a very good memory, it seemed, and had taken quite the shine to her after she’d rescued it from the fence. It would land on her shoulder sometimes, but it would never let her pet it.

 

   Chell hadn’t seen the raven, whom she had nick-named Aleu, for a few days. That was fine, she was sure the raven had bird obligations somewhere in a flock or a field far away from there, but she still worried a bit. The raven was one of the few things she liked.

 

   The sun was on it’s way down, but she would definitely be able to make it back before dark. She’d managed to get into the forest at a decent clip, her ears pricked for suspicious movement but her mind admittedly wandering. Chell was getting hungry, so she’d check the trap closest to her home when she got near it; it was rabbit season, but the mountain lions, bobcats, and other assorted sharp-toothed predators knew that too, and would not pass up a trapped animal.

 

   Chell had become quite adept at survivalist things; she could put those things at the front of her mind because surviving was actually something that mattered, not like naming every creature she came across or making nice with every person she came across. Of course, when she had been spat out of that shed in the middle of the wheat field, she had known little about survival and was much too angry to think about it immediately. If she hadn’t had someone to teach her, she probably would have starved.

 

   She reached the stream that marked the three-fourths-of-the-way home, and hopped lightly over the exposed rocks that she’d placed there herself. Chell could see her little shack now; it’s light was on and there was a bit of movement in the window, a scraggly silhouette doing god knew what, probably working on one of his gadgets. That didn’t bother her, as long as he wasn’t breaking anything.

 

   Making a beeline to the right of her trodden path, her eyes lit up when there, was in fact, a rabbit caught in her snare. It wasn’t fat, but it would do.

 

   Collecting her game and making her way back to the house, Chell heard the unmistakeable croaky caw of her little friend, and she smiled. The closer she got, she saw that Aleu was at the window and pecking it with its beak, occasionally flapping its wings and cawing again in a demand to be let inside. Once it saw it’s big strong human come walking up with a bag on her back and a shiny thing in her hand, it turned a bit and made a deathly sounding attempt at human speech.

 

   “Heh-lo.” Aleu’s beady little eyes glinted, no longer paying attention to the figure in the window. It shuffled its wings and hopped to the ground as she approached.

 

   “Hey buddy.” Chell responded, a bit more politely than she would with an actual person. When not being wrung through an underground facility and thrown down stories into an even deeper part of said facility, she found herself to be much more talkative and rather liked the sound of her own voice. At first she had been quite stunned when the bird had begun picking up human speech, but as it had been explained to her, more species of bird did this other than ravens. But ravens were local and other birds were not, so as far as she was concerned, she had the smartest bird around.

 

   The human brushed the hair from her eyes and walked past the shed, prompting her raven to hop along behind her for a bit before taking off and landing on her roof. Behind the shed there was a fire pit that she was going to kick up, but for now she just wanted some alone time with the raven. It was something she enjoyed, if only for a few minutes.

   She sat down at a makeshift chair (Which was really just a log, but it was a log she sat on, so it was a chair to her) and opened up the woven pack of goodies she’d accumulated earlier that day. She still had half a loaf of bread; she’d eaten so much of it that she’d become sick of the stuff. She almost hated the smell that it put out when it was baked, even if she didn’t have to make it and it was to sell, but until her vegetables grew in more fully, bread and canned food it was. There was a surprising amount of canned food still available around here, but then again it was also a surprisingly empty place where she lived.

 

   Breaking up the bread into smaller pieces, she tossed a few to her raven, who readily ate them. She could tell that Aleu was more interested in the rabbit she had taken up, but the rabbit was for supper. 

 

   Once Aleu had eaten a bit of the bread she began to focus more intently on the rabbit’s carcass. Chell squinted with a smirk on her face, and got up to the work table that was at the back of the shed. The raven eagerly followed behind her, taking to the air and landing on the section of roof above the table, tilting its head as she put the rabbit down and began to skin it.

 

   She had to skin rabbits or whatever it was she found out here now; her room mate was just too squeamish. Chell had no problem whatsoever with it since it netted her food. Taking one of the ears and cutting it off, she turned toward her bird and held it up. “What does Aleu say?”

 

   “Pleez.” said Aleu, though to Chell’s ears it sounded more like ‘blease’. It would suffice.

 

   So Chell tossed it toward the bird and it greedily snapped it up and swallowed it whole. There were only a few things that her raven said, ‘hello’ and ‘please’ being among them. She hadn’t been able to get it to say her name even if it was an imitation bird and she had said her name repeatedly for it.

 

  When it began bending over the edge of the roof, it’s shiny black head angled toward the rabbit, Chell held up the other ear and cocked her head at it and said, “What’s your name?”

 

   The raven took a moment, as if pondering, then answered. “Aloo.” Aleu said, and was pleased when it was tossed another rabbit’s ear.

 

  Making short work of the rest of the rabbit and cleaning the blood from her hands, Chell left the undesirable bits in a little dish up on the roof, which was no trouble for her to reach. If Aleu didn’t eat them the owls would, so it was no matter. Looking at the rabbit’s pelt and liking how she’d skinned it, Chell decided that all in all, today had not gone so bad.

 

   There was a tinny-sounding knock from the inside of the shed against the wall where she stood. Cutting up the meat she’d been able to get from the rabbit, Chell kicked back in equal rhythm, never lifting her eyes from her work.

 

   “Are you done?” Came the raspy voice from inside, sounding nervous.

 

   “Just about. Start up the fire.” Chell responded curtly, looking for the skewers that she used to cook whatever game she had.

 

   She heard the door open and a half muttered goodbye, soon followed by the jumpy steps of her room-mate. His eyes were forced toward the ground and in his hands was a box of matches that he held close to his chest, like he was afraid they would jump away.

 

   He had a shaggy and oily mop of black hair that stuck out it many directions, and an equally scruffy looking beard that covered the bottom half of his face. When he had first met Chell (Though in truth he had been charged at, but that was something that Chell did not like to admit she had done) he had been wearing a tattered lab coat and clothes that could barely be described as clothes beneath it, but now he was wearing a light blue shirt with some decades old logo on it for something that didn’t exist anyway, as far as they were concerned, and some cargo pants that were filled with crumbled up paper and pencils.

 

   “Doug?” She said, having found the skewers and was pushing them into the cuts of rabbit meat.

 

   It took him a moment to answer, as he had averted his gaze from the bloodied worktable entirely in favor of looking at anything else and was putting chopped up wood into the fire pit. “Yes?”

 

   “Why didn’t you let Aleu inside?” Chell asked him, a somewhat accusing tone in her voice.

 

   Doug didn’t answer at first, but she could hear him shakily opening the matchbox and getting ready to light the fire. “I was checking something.” He answered in his usual matter-of-fact but still obsequious manner.

 

  Chell furrowed her brow and forced her curling lip back to normal. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She shed her jacket and turned toward the fire, a skewer in her right hand and the rabbit’s pelt in her left.

 

   Doug had since begun scrambling to set up the stands that would let her spitroast them, still not looking her in the eye, but he rarely did. She couldn't even remember what color his eyes were since he looked her in the face so little. “I know that um… that you don’t particularly care about birds. And-and what to call them.”

 

   “Mhm.”

 

   Chell set the spitroast up and crouched down to help him light the fire. He continued, wiping the hair out of his eyes. “I was wondering about your bird-”   
  


   “Aleu.”

 

   “Yes, Aleu. I was wondering what it’s gender was but I usually can’t get close enough to see it.” Doug stepped back, letting Chell blow on the fire; once he’d gotten some embers caught in his beard. Nothing happened but the many things that could have arisen from the event taught him not to put his face so close.

 

   “So when it showed up and demanded to be let inside I took the opportunity to-to get a closer look.” He said this part almost as if he was convincing himself as much as relaying information.

 

   From on the roof behind them and casting a long shadow from the setting sun, Aleu gave a croaking call, apparently finished with the bowl of innards and knowing that it was being talked about. Chell saw Doug glance uneasily at it.

 

   Almost lost in his own thoughts, he shook his head a bit and cleared his throat, trying to stand up straight. “A-anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that I think your raven is a female. I think. I’m not sure.”

 

   Chell gave him a withering look as she stood up, ashes smearing her pants and the bottom of her shirt. “If you aren’t sure then you should have let her in.”

 

   Doug looked away again, one hand finding the back of his neck and rubbing it. “Sorry. I just thought you might like t-to know.” He mumbled, striding toward the other log that had been placed around the other side of the pit. Once he sat down he promptly began digging through his pockets.

 

   She felt a little bad for snapping, but she didn’t tell him that. Instead she reached into her back, brought out two cans of fruit with the labels barely intelligible, the hoodie, and stood over him. He looked up like a cornered rat, and she saw that Doug had blue-green eyes. What do you know?

 

   He’d since grabbed his arms in a faux crossing gesture and half-cowered at her expectantly. She was a good head and some odd inches taller than him even when he was standing up, so this just made her seem even bigger. Chell held out the hoodie and one can of fruit.

 

   It took a few moments to get Doug firing on all cylinders when he got startled, but eventually he got the idea. He took the can and immediately started putting the hoodie on. “Thank you…” he said, and trailed away.

 

   Chell dismissively waved her hand and went back to her side of the bonfire, turning the meat a bit as she did. Things went on in relative silence for a few minutes, only the occasional ‘wob-wob’ sound from Aleu and Doug jumping at shadows. The crickets had begun chirping softly and the birds had quieted down, the deep blue of the night sky showing its broad face above them. The night sky was also something that Chell hated; or rather, what was in the night sky, regardless of whether or not it could be seen.

 

   She hadn’t told Doug every detail about what had happened to her. On the contrary, Chell had a sneaking suspicion that somehow, Doug already knew a whole lot more about what had happened than he let on. In fact, she was certain that he did, especially since he’d been met while scribbling someone that looked suspiciously like her on a wall. This was why she didn’t really trust him; she of course trusted him not to make a mess of anything and not to dig through her stuff, but this was easily seen. He had come to her wearing a shabby Aperture Science Innovators lab coat after all, even if he looked out of his mind.

 

   Chell had begun ruminating on these thoughts and had begun to look angry, staring into the embers of the fire that now crackled and popped. 

 

   Doug tilted his head and looked around it uneasily, still holding his can of fruit close to his chest with the box of matches. “Chell? Are-are you alright?”

 

   She snapped out of it, her eyes moving but the rest of her head standing still. She gave him a wan smile, one she did not mean but it was an easy enough way to calm him down. “I’m fine, just thinking.” She replied, and turned the meat again. “How’s your radio?”

 

   He seemed to untense a bit and the slight upturned corners of his mouth could almost be seen through his beard. “It’s going pretty well. I think I almost fixed it… if there are any radio stations running, we’ll have those soon.”

 

   Chell nodded in acknowledgement and stood up. She heard him mutter, “If I can get the antenna to work.”

 

   She looked at the skewered meat, decided that it was done enough, and went to go get a couple of forks and plates. Once she returned, she hacked open her can of fruit and found it to be peaches. Doug awkwardly shuffled up and got his plate and fork, as well as slightly holding out the can; he had no pocket knife.

 

   Chell just gave him hers and a few chunks of rabbit while prying open the other can. Also peaches.

 

   Doug returned to his side of the fire, jumping  and almost dropping his food when Aleu decided it was high time to leave and cawed her goodbyes before taking off and fluttering loudly away into the dark forest.

 

  Chell ate like a wolf, there was simply no other way to describe it. The rabbit required some amount of chewing since it was a bit stringy, but it was like she had swallowed the sliced peaches whole. Fruit was also one of the few things that Chell liked besides her raven. It was one of her life’s ambitions to eat a fresh apple one day. It was a small thing but something she’d set as a goal.

 

   Doug, on the other hand, ate slowly, as if he were sure he’d choke if he didn’t. It wouldn’t surprise Chell in the least if he thought this. 

 

   Once Chell was done, which was in no time at all, she put the rabbit’s pelt on her drying rack. It was a pretty little pelt and would probably go for a good bit of whatever she needed at the market. “I’m going to Kaltag Crossing tomorrow. You’re going to be alone for most of the day.”

 

   “Actually… I was wondering i-if I could come with you. To Kaltag Crossing.” Doug mumbled, barely heard over the roar of the fire.

 

   Chell glanced at him suspiciously. “Why? You hate crowds.”

 

   “Four merchants and a few customers isn’t a crowd. I just wanted to snoop around a bit.” Doug said, sounding as though he were hiding something but doing a terrible job at it.

 

   “Fine. But you have to leave the cube here.”

 

   She could see Doug flash her a dirty look from the corner of her eye, but he nodded and got up. “Alright. I’m going to go in then. Early start.” He said as he left his plate and fork at the very edge of the worktable.

 

   Slumping back against the log and staring into the fire, Chell wondered what he could possibly want at Kaltag. There were people who sold mostly weapons there, clothes, matches that were way too expensive, canned food that was also way too expensive, and some knick-knacks that served no purpose other than taking up space.

 

   She knew that Doug did not like weapons, had enough clothes to get by, was practical enough with ‘money’ that he knew better than to buy those matches or that canned food, and that the cube was the only knick-knack he needed. They had two of those damn things now.

 

   They made good tables and Chell found, completely by accident, that they were also able to be used as storage cubes. She’d begun keeping most of the shiny things that Aleu had brought her in a drawer, but anything that may have held monetary value she kept in her cube. Of course, monetary value was in the eye of the beholder nowadays, but still.

 

   The main thing that people seemed to think had value was usable stuff, be it for actual purposes or for adornment. She’d seen deer antlers that she was sure people valued more than a human life; this did not bother her as she thought it would. The value of a human life had been overlooked quite a lot in her time, so it was not all that different from her past experiences. If anything Doug seemed to care more if she got hurt than she did, which to her was a bit disconcerting. 

 

   As Chell was still thinking about what else she could bring to trade at Kaltag besides her pelt and a few loaves of bread, she heard the somewhat statick-y but still merry sound of music from inside the shed. There was a joyous yelp and some muffled talking that was soon followed by the door clanging open. Doug scrambled around the side of the shed with his eyes sparkling, just a little bit, and a grin on his face. In his hands was a box radio with most of the paint chipped away and the back hanging open, but that little box was making a lot of noise. It was choppy and cut noise, but it was still noise, and even Chell smiled, genuinely this time.

 

_ “-Love those de-dear hearts and gentle people _

_    Wh-  _ **_bzzzzt_ ** _ in my home town _

_    Because those  _ **_bbbzzrt_ ** _ and gentle people _

_    Will ne-ever ever let you down. _ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how long this story will be but it is fun to write; I try to update weekly on Fridays.


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